Pager, Sean A. --- "Digital Content Production in Nigeria and Brazil: A Case for Cultural Optimism?" [2012] ELECD 699; in Pager, A. Sean; Candeub, Adam (eds), "Transnational Culture in the Internet Age" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Transnational Culture in the Internet Age

Editor(s): Pager, A. Sean; Candeub, Adam

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9780857931337

Section: Chapter 12

Section Title: Digital Content Production in Nigeria and Brazil: A Case for Cultural Optimism?

Author(s): Pager, Sean A.

Number of pages: 26

Extract:

12. Digital content production in
Nigeria and Brazil: a case for
cultural optimism?
Sean A. Pager*

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times . . .
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair . . .
(Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities)



12.1 INTRODUCTION

Like Dickens's revolutionary France, the beginning of the 21st century
was an era of rapid change that provoked both extreme optimism and
pessimism. Two contrasting views on the future of cultural diversity com-
peted in global discourse.
Cultural optimism thrived in the technophilic raptures of the dotcom
mania. Cybertopians envisioned a future in which technology tilted
creative markets decisively in favor of diverse content and decentral-
ized production. As the Internet freed us from Big Media's stranglehold,
commercial content would be supplanted by a reinvigorated folk culture
powered by digital networks, open source licenses, peer production,
remixes, mash-ups and "pajama bloggers." In this brave new world of
democratic empowerment, concerns over cultural diversity would dissolve
magically into a digital cornucopia.1



* Vital research assistance was provided by Brett Manchel, Nick Paulucci,
Roger Fonseca, and Barbara Doty. Thanks also to Mark Schultz and Jon Garon.
1 See, e.g. Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is

Selling Less of More, 52­57 (2006) (charting diversification and democratization
of culture); Yochai Benkler, The Wealth of Networks 15 (2006) (hailing birth
of digital "folk culture"); Madhavi Sunder, IP3, 59 Stan. L. Rev. 257, 263 (2006)
(heralding " ...